It's time to get a move on May 23 2017

A new home and exciting future

For small breweries like us the question of when to expand can be exciting, but also nerve wracking.

The risks of expanding too quickly are obvious. The economies of scale involved in brewing and brewing equipment mean it can be a dangerous game to invest in extra vessels before you’re confident you can fill them.

To put it simply, you have to be absolutely bursting at the seams and struggling to meet demand before you can even think about expanding.

At the moment we can’t move without tripping over bags of malt. The FVs are nearly bursting out of the door. Linda has to live a nocturnal existence brewing more and more beer with the same number of vessels…

All this means that it is time to move.

Shiny and new

That’s why last month we assembled our crack team of brewery movers (pictured below) to vacate the kitchens at Brougham Hall to relocate to shiny, modern and - most importantly - much larger premises on Gilwilly Industrial Estate.

We’ll miss Brougham Hall. It’s been a great place for us to grow over the last few years. But the fact is that demand for our beer has increased so much that we simply cannot brew enough here.

Our new home at Gilwilly will have four times the space. And, what's more, it will all be under one roof (rather than in lots of separate smaller buildings as at present). Here's a pic that shows just how massive it is.

More beer more of the time

This will allow us to increase our total fermenting capacity to 11,200 litres, and brew 5600 litres a week on average. There’ll be more room for stock and easier access for lorry loads of bottles and malt and less manual labour for us lifting and carrying all the time. (We’ll just do press ups in our spare time to make sure we keep our fitness levels up.)

It’s an exciting time and there is a lot of work to do, but this is exactly the kind of premises we need if we’re going to carry on making more and more great beer for more and more people.

On a practical note, we've had a few issues with people getting confused and thinking we are still at Brougham Hall. Just to be crystal clear, our new unit is on Hartness Road, Penrith, CA11 9BD.